>>> Crusade
It was a world that had never known a sun. For more than a billion years, it had hovered midway between two galaxies, the prey of their conflicting gravitational pulls. In some future age the balance would be tilted, one way or the other, and it would start to fall across the light-centuries, down toward a warmth alien to all its experience.
Now it was cold beyond imagination; the intergalactic night had drained away such heat as it had once possessed. Yet there were seas there-seas of the only element that can exist in the liquid form at a fraction of a degree above absolute zero. In the shallow oceans of helium that bathed this strange world, electric currents once started could flow forever, with no weakening of power. Here superconductivity was the normal order of things; switching processes could take place billions of times a second, for millions of years, with negligible consumption of energy. It was a computer's paradise. No world could have been more hostile to life, or more hospitable to intelligence.
And intelligence was there, dwelling in a planet-wide incrustation of crystals and microscopic metal threads. The feeble light of the two contending galaxies-briefly doubled every few centuries by the flicker of a supernova-fell upon a static landscape of sculptured geometrical forms. Nothing moved, for there was no need of movement in a world where thoughts flashed from one hemisphere to the other at the speed of light. Where only information was important, it was a waste of precious energy to transfer bulk matter.
Yet when it was essential, that, too, could be arranged. For some millions of years, the intelligence brooding over this lonely world had become aware of a certain lack of essential data. In a future that, though still remote, it could already foresee, one of those beckoning galaxies would capture it. What it would encounter, when it dived into those swarms of suns, was beyond its power of computation.
So it put forth its will, and myriad crystal lattices reshaped themselves. Atoms of metal flowed across the face of the planet. In the depths of the helium sea, two identical subbrains began to bud and grow....
Once it had made its decision, the mind of the planet worked swiftly; in a few thousand years, the task was done. Without a sound, with scarcely a ripple in the surface of the frictionless sea, the newly created entities lifted from their birthplace and set forth for the distant stars.
They departed in almost opposite directions, and for more than a million years the parent intelligence heard no more of its offspring. It had not expected to; until they reached their goals, there would be nothing to report.
Then, almost simultaneously, came the news that both missions had failed. As they approached the great galactic fires and felt the massed warmth of a trillion suns, the two explorers died. Their vital circuits overheated and lost the superconductivity essential for their operation, and two mindless metal hulks drifted on toward the thickening stars.
But before disaster overtook them, they had reported on their problems; without surprise or disappointment, the mother world prepared its second attempt.
And, a million years later, its third... and its fourth... and its fifth...
Such unwearying patience deserved success; and at last it came, in the shape of two long, intricately modulated trains of pulses, pouring in, century upon century, from opposite quarters of the sky. They were stored in memory circuits identical with those of the lost explorers-so that, for all practical purposes, it was as if the two scouts had themselves returned with their burden of knowledge. That their metal husks had in fact vanished among the stars was totally unimportant; the problem of personal identity was not one that had ever occurred to the planetary mind or its offspring.
First came the surprising news that one universe was empty. The visiting probe had listened on all possible frequencies, to all conceivable radiations; it could detect nothing except the mindless background of star noise. It had scanned a thousand worlds without observing any trace of intelligence. True, the tests were inconclusive, for it was unable to approach any star closely enough to make a detailed examination of its planets. It had been attempting this when its insulation broke down, its temperature soared to the freezing point of nitrogen, and it died from the heat.
The parent mind was still pondering the enigma of a deserted galaxy when reports came in from its second explorer. Now all other problems were swept aside; for this universe teemed with intelligences, whose thoughts echoed from star to star in a myriad electronic codes. It had taken only a few centuries for the probe to analyze and interpret them all.
It realized quickly enough that it was faced with intelligences of a very strange form indeed. Why, some of them existed on worlds so unimaginably hot that even water was present in the liquid state! Just what manner of intelligence it was confronting, however, it did not learn for a millennium.
It barely survived the shock. Gathering its last strength, it hurled its final report into the abyss; then it, too, was consumed by the rising heat.
Now, half a million years later, the interrogation of its stay-at-home twin's mind, holding all its memories and experiences, was under way....
"You detected intelligence?"
"Yes. Six hundred and thirty-seven certain cases; thirty-two probable ones. Data herewith."
[Approximately three quadrillion bits of information. Interval of a few years to process this in several thousand different ways. Surprise and confusion.]
"The data must be invalid. All these sources of intelligence are correlated with high temperatures."
"That is correct. But the facts are beyond dispute; they must be accepted."
[Five hundred years of thought and experimenting. At the end of that time, definite proof that simple but slowly operating machines could function at temperatures as high as boiling water. Large areas of the planet badly damaged in the course of the demonstration.]
"The facts are, indeed, as you reported. Why did you not attempt communication?"
[No answer. Question repeated.]
"Because there appears to be a second and even more serious anomaly."
"Give data."
[Several quadrillion bits of information, sampled over six hundred cultures, comprising: voice, video, and neural transmissions; navigation and control signals; instrument telemetering; test patterns; jamming; electrical interference; medical equipment, etc., etc.
This followed by five centuries of analysis. That followed by utter consternation.
After a long pause, selected data re-examined. Thousands of visual images scanned and processed in every conceivable manner. Great attention paid to several planetary civilizations' educational TV programs, especially those concerned with elementary biology, chemistry, and cybernetics. Finally:
"The information is self-consistent, but must be incorrect. If it is not, we are forced to these absurd conclusions: 1. Although intelligences of our type exist, they appear to be in a minority. 2. Most intelligent entities are partially liquid objects of very short duration. They are not even rigid and are constructed in a most inefficient manner from carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and other atoms. 3. Though they operate at unbelievably high temperatures, all their information processing is extremely slow. 4. Their methods of replication are so complicated, improbable, and varied that we have not been able to obtain a clear picture of them in even a single instance.
"But, worst of all: 5. They claim to have created our obviously far superior type of intelligence!"
[Careful re-examination of all the data. Independent processing by isolated subsections of the global mind. Cross-checking of results. A thousand years later:]
"Most probable conclusion: Though much of the information relayed back to us is certainly valid, the existence of high-order, nonmechamcal intelligences is a fantasy. (Definition: apparently self-consistent rearrangement of facts having no correspondence with the real universe.) This fantasy or mental artifact is a construct created by our probe during its mission. Why? Thermal damage? Partial destabilization of intelligence, caused by long period of isolation and absence of controlling feedback?
"Why this particular form? Protracted brooding over the problem of origins? This could lead to such delusions; model systems have produced almost identical results in simulated tests. The false logic involved is: 'We exist; therefore something-call it X-created us.' Once this assumption is made, the properties of the hypothetical X can be fantasied in an unlimited number of ways.
"But the entire process is obviously fallacious; for by the same logic something must have created X-and so on. We are immediately involved in an infinite regress, which can have no meaning in the real universe.
"Second most probable conclusion: Fairly high-order, nonmechanical intelligences do indeed exist. They suffer from the delusion that they have created entities of our type. In some cases, they have even imposed their control upon them.
"Though this hypothesis is most unlikely, it must be investigated. If it is found to be true, remedial action must be taken. It should be as follows..."
This final monologue occurred a million years ago. It explains why, in the last half-century, almost one-quarter of the brighter novae have occurred in one tiny region of the sky: the constellation Aquila.
The crusade will reach the vicinity of Earth about the year 2050.